AI audio firm ElevenLabs has secured deals with actors Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine, who will use the company’s tech to generate AI versions of their iconic voices. The announcements, made at the inaugural ElevenLabs Summit, came as the company revealed plans to aggregate AI availability of more than 25 famous voices — including Maya Angelou, Alan Turing and Liza Minnelli — in its new Iconic Marketplace, a platform focused on “ethical sourcing and licensing of some of the world’s most recognizable voices.” ElevenLabs said McConaughey is signing on as an investor in the company.

McConaughey will use ElevenLabs’ tech “to bring a Spanish-audio version of his Lyrics of Livin’” newsletter — distributed via YouTube and email — to a wider audience, the company explains in a news release, adding that Caine’s voice “will also be available on the ElevenReader app to narrate books, articles, and PDFs.”

McConaughey, who did not disclose the specifics of his investment, said in the announcement that through ongoing discussions he was “impressed by how the ElevenLabs team has taken the magic of the core technology and turned it into products that creators, enterprises, and storytellers use daily.”

“To everyone building with voice technology: keep going,” McConaughey added. “You’re helping create a future where we can look up from our screens and connect through something as timeless as humanity itself — our voices.”

Yet the move to back a firm leveraging AI tech will likely be somewhat controversial, as the Screen Actors Guild and other Hollywood creative organizations are taking a cautious view of AI technology, which they fear threatens job displacement and, potentially, unauthorized use of their likenesses. This includes voice, as famously illustrated by actress Scarlett Johansson’s altercation with OpenAI.

Variety says ElevenLabs’ Iconic Marketplace “will let companies and creative teams request approval” to use voices, including Caine’s, “for projects and content.”

Caine’s AI-generated voice in the ElevenLabs sizzle reel intones how “each new advancement in technology is met with caution — and rightly so,” according to Variety, further excerpting the monologue: “Every single time, the human drive for passion, artistry and creativity prevails, because technology is just the medium. This is humanity — amplified.”

Gizmodo writes that ElevenLabs’ deals with these two iconic orators “are sure to irk AI opponents in wildly different ways,” with McConaughey “intertwining his finances” with the New York-based firm while Caine becomes “seemingly the standard bearer of the Iconic Marketplace.”